Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

Ryan stood, ending the meeting. So did Christyakov. “I’m telling you this, Maksim, so you can pass along the information to your boss. Clarity is a virtue in diplomacy.”

Ryan extended his hand. The Russian took it.

“I will be sure to pass your information along, Mr. President.” Christyakov’s eyes locked with Ryan’s. “It was an unusual pleasure to meet you. You rose above my expectations, which were considerable, given your reputation.”

“I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again soon, Mr. Ambassador. I wish you much success in your new position.”

Ryan opened the visitor door and pointed the way out.

As Ryan took his seat, the door swung back open and Arnie came in.

“How’d it go?”

“Scott was right. We don’t want to make the mistake of underestimating that guy, family ties or not.”

“He didn’t cough anything up?”

“If I read him correctly, he’s not aware of his government’s involvement with the sinkings.”

“But they are involved, right?”

Ryan shrugged. “That’s still our presumption. I’m not willing to second-guess myself at this point. I gave Christyakov fair warning. If it’s a Russian sub out there we’re going to find it and, if necessary, sink it, unless they get the hell out before we show up. If we’re lucky, they’ll take the hint and vamoose.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we might have a war on our hands.”

38

SOUTH PACIFIC

ON THE HELO DECK OF THE USS LUZON (CG-74)

Lieutenant Bob “Daisy” Callaway sat in the right-hand pilot’s seat of the MH-60R (Romeo) Seahawk helicopter, the rotors on his bird slowly spinning up, preparing for takeoff. His helmet was festooned with daisy flower stickers, rainbows, and peace symbols, an inside joke among his air crew.

The first raindrops sparkled like rhinestones as they spattered on the windshield, illumined by the overhead deck light. With his naked eyes, Callaway could barely see the blue-shirted chock and chain men kneeling down next to the LSE with his bird’s gear in their hands. That was the first sign he was almost clear to take off.

The “Grape” had just pulled the fuel hose, crouching low beneath the slowly turning blades, powered by two GE T700/CT7 turboshaft engines. They’d been ordered to find the Glazov ASAP. As per SOPs, the purple-shirted Grape had shown Callaway the fuel mixture she put in his tank—like he was ever going to object—and the red-shirted ordnance crew had pulled the safety pins from their load of four anti-ship AGM-114 Hellfires, and a Mark 54 air-launched, anti-submarine torpedo. It was designed to be a non-combat mission but the Navy liked to be prepared for all eventualities.

Especially the killing kind.

It was pitch black, and despite its bulk, the big Ticonderoga -class Luzon was yawing in a cool, stiff wind that whipped the water into a Pitch 3, Roll 3 situation. Manageable, but not ideal.

Callaway waited anxiously for the twenty-two-year-old LSE to clear him for launch before the weather got worse, and the night even darker. Night flying under the best of conditions—even with night vision—still induced maximum pucker factor for any pilot but especially a helo pilot. But that was the job he’d signed up for after graduating from Annapolis—Canoe U.

Tonight’s mission was to find the sub and force it to the surface. Neither objective was easy.

Either could get you killed.

Callaway knew that finding an improved Kilo-class running on electric batteries while submerged was nearly impossible. Finding one ASAP was even more impossible, even with two Romeos on the hunt, the most advanced ASW helicopters in the air today.

The plan was to first drop their entire complement of AN/SSQ-101 ADAR passive sonobuoys in a wide grid pattern centered on the Russian sub tender Penza . Each device deployed a translucent, pentagon-shaped umbrella of hydrophones listening for known improved Kilo-class sound signatures.

With the help of the Romeo’s onboard computer, Callaway’s AWO would analyze the ambient sound forms to identify the Glazov ’s signature by comparing them to all known submarine signatures stored in the Navy’s highly classified digital library.

Making the impossible even more difficult was the fact that Callaway’s Romeo had been out of commission for several hours yesterday with a malfunctioning laser altimeter and the loss of hydraulic boost. That meant Callaway had to maintain seventy-five pounds of constant pressure on the left pedal just to keep it from yawing while also fighting the unboosted collective and cyclic inputs. Thanks to the constant training in “loss of control” emergency scenarios, the sweat-drenched pilot and his crew made it back to the ship, but it was a close call. Thanks to the two dozen perennially shorthanded, sleep-deprived maintenance people, the machine got fixed.

It was nothing new for the maintenance crew. It was a 24/7/365 job to keep the helicopters aloft, and both seldom were, at least simultaneously. Keeping nearly twenty-four thousand pounds of machine and munitions in the sky without crashing was no easy feat while at sea. The salt air and water played hell with anything that could rust, clog, or corrode, and both were murder on the electronics gear, which was the primary weapon of the fabled helicopter.

Now it was up to Callaway and the other Seahawk to get to the search area and begin ASW operations, and to do it all at night. With the naked eye it was harder than hell flying just two hundred feet above the black water and beneath a black sky, with no horizon for reference. Unless you had the luxury of NVGs, night flying over the Pacific meant flying by instruments, and when the instruments failed, people died. Most of the folks back home, including Callaway’s own parents, didn’t realize how often those instruments failed, including night vision.

His wife did. Lieutenant Anne “Snow White” Callaway flew the nearly identical MH-60S “Knighthawk” airframe on vertical replenishment (VERTREP) and search-and-rescue (SAR) missions in the same carrier strike group. They were the first married couple ever assigned to their CSG. While fixed-wingers obsessed on call signs, most helicopter pilots eschewed them. It just wasn’t their thing. But the CSG flight ops center had given the Callaways their call signs not only to be able to distinguish the two pilots with the same last name during flight operations, but also to let the two married partners know when the other one was flying.

C’mon, for Pete’s sake, Callaway said to himself, keeping one eye on the signalman’s red light wands and one on the pitching deck, which seemed to be pitching even harder now. His airborne tactical officer (ATO) and copilot was hyperfocused on the twin-engine readouts.

“Finally,” Callaway whispered in his comms as the enlisted landing signalman switched his red wands to green. The LSE extended his arms and lifted them up laterally, indicating to Callaway that he had permission to raise the Romeo into a hover position before taking off.

Callaway increased the throttle and raised the collective, holding his cyclic and pedals neutral to the stiff breeze buffeting the ship as he brought it into a hover. As the digital gauges swept and climbed across the glass cockpit, the ATO called out the numbers. “Looking good,” he added hopefully, like a prayer, as he always did during liftoff. But his “prayer” was routine, and pilots were devoted to their routines, especially ones that kept them from getting killed, even the superstitious ones.

The LSE then began twirling the green wands, granting permission for Callaway to begin his turn forty-five degrees right, and then power away. In reality, helicopter pilots ignored these instructions from the man on deck—his ass wasn’t in the seat, and his feet weren’t on the pedals. The transition from hover to forward flight was the most dangerous part of the flight. Helicopters needed forward momentum to actually fly, and physical forces trying to crash his aircraft played their hardest in the movement between the vertical and horizontal planes.